CHAPTER ONE
1.0. INTRODUCTION
       Advances in the area of wireless technologies have the potential of transforming communication initiatives especially, in the developing countries of Africa that are characterized by a dilapidated telecommunications infrastructure. Through these technologies, it is now possible to bring wireless access to remote and disadvantaged communities. It is also significant that costs for wireless technologies continue to drop, making wireless connectivity increasingly affordable. Today, many in Africa are plugged – in and switched-on (Zachary, 2004).
The most documented from wireless use in Africa is the mobile phone, growth in mobile telephone in Africa has been rapid in the last eight years, since telecommunications sector reforms in most countries opened markets to competition as a result of the ‘Basic Telecommunication Service Agreement’ the demand has overtaken that of fixed line services. For most of the new subscribers, their mobile phone is their first and only telephone. Most countries Africa have as least two mobile networks, one of which is government. Owned by the end of 2001, Africa had 104 mobile networks operational, serving over 14 million customers in addition to 10 million in South Africa (Warmook and Sankar 2004). And they were almost 52 million by the end of 2003 (ITU, 2004), By far, the majority of the systems in use are now based on the digital GSM standard.
One notable observation is the considerable variation between different African logies, ranging from the fairly advanced status of south Africa to the relatively under developed status of Somalia.
This paper has not dwelt much on south Africa, even though there is a lot of documented literature from this country, because it is not representative of the rest of the continent, especially sub-saharan Africa where poverty is the norm. The developments in South Africa given their nature and scope would constitute a more comprehensive/study.
Some examples from African show the surge in the mobile sector growth in Cameroon has, in a way compensated for the disappointing performance of Cameroon Telecommunication Company (CAMTEL). The mobile phone accounts for more than 4 percent of teledensity and the fixed lines for less than 0.7 percent in the country which has a population of 16 million (Nzepa 2004).
In Ethiopia, the current demand for mobile lines is five times that of the fixed line waiting list. The number of subscribers improved in 2002 following the expansion of the network and introduction of the prepaid service (Adam, 2004). In Kenya, the combined connections for the two cellular operators had increased from 1500 to 2.1 million by the end of 2003. this difference represent a growth rate of 27 percent year (Mureithi 2004) and is much higher than the 3.5 percent rate of the fixed line operation. There are currently 6.8 million subscribers as of June 2005. The mobile network is now over ten times the size of the fixed network in subscription numbers.
In essence, it reconfirms the changing consumer preference for cellular. In Uganda mobile phone subscribers grew from 12,000 in 1998 to 711, 313 in 2003. conversely, fixed lines grew by 5 percent from 56, 196 to 64 856 lines in the same period (Garmurorwa 2004).
In view of the fact that mobile phones are the most visible form of wireless use in Africa, section two discusses the various ways in which mobile phones are deployed in Africa with a specific focus on network deployment, user-driven practices, and complementary services. Section three the applications of mobile phones for development in Africa. In the next section attention shifts to literature on other forms of wireless technologies for development, specifically, ‘non-mobile phones’ the last section is devoted to some concluding remarks.
STATEMENT OF PROBLEMS
Globacom, is a Nigeria company duly incorporated under the laws of Nigeria. Incorporated in Nigeria as a private company, it acquired the unified access license from the federal government in January 2002. The license includes a mobile license and spectrum in the GSM 1800 and 900 MHz bands. Globacom has been the telecommunications service provider in Nigeria and has built up state-of-the art telecom infrastructure and taken a leadership position of innovation and reliability among regional and international operators.
The business of recharging GSM phones is a big business in Nigeria and to gain a competitive advantage over other providers, new innovations needs to be introduced in order to stay competitive. The problems of recharging via epins have been identified to be enormously risky and therefore, a web based recharge system may present us another option up for grabs. This options is to be made available for internet saving subscribers.
1.2. AIM AND OBJECTIVES
The study is aimed at developing a web based system for GSM phone recharge and to subsequently achieve the following objective.
- Easy exchange or transfer to credits or air time from on subscriber to another
- efficient information retrieval
- provide recharge option for subscript and
- make
available to management and the general public timely, multipurpose function
and checking of credit balance online.
- PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The purpose of this study is to develop a web based GSM phone recharge alternative and creating a competitive advantage over other providers by taking a critical look at methods of mobile phone deployment in Africa.
